No waste

CATHERINE GARRETT, PRESENTER: Well now we've all seen the stickers on our garbage trucks advertising the ACT Government's no waste policy by 2010.

The cynics amongst us might say the strategy's a failure by the mere fact that we're still seeing garbage trucks around the city.

In fact, our level of waste is actually on the increase. Those in charge of the program are disheartened by Canberran's addiction to shopping and the waste that comes with it.

Craig Allen reports.

CRAIG ALLEN, REPORTER: Canberra's an affluent community. And boy do we know how to shop!

We buy when times are good and we shop out of consolation when times get tough.

And if you need convincing, just take a look at the end of the food chain.

This is the ugly face of Canberra's consumerism. Every day, a fleet of garbage trucks crawls through Canberra's suburbs. The drivers work from sun up, emptying the thousands of bins we leave out on the streets, and ferrying the garbage to Canberra's landfill or recycling complexes.

GARBAGE TRUCK DRIVER: About 40 minutes there or a bit over an hour to turn around and come back. We do three loads a day.

CRAIG ALLEN: Transpacific Cleanaway is nearing the end of its seven year contract to collect Canberra's household rubbish. But their work's not running out any time soon. The mountain of waste they deposit at Hume is growing at 20 tonnes an hour.

Wind the clock back 14 years when the then Liberal Government launched a bold strategy to build a waste free society. The goal was to use less, recycle more, and totally eliminate any garbage going to landfill by the year 2010.

Well, its D day and still the trucks keep coming.

CHRIS WARE, ACT NOWASTE: We're standing on top of the former land fill. Before that cell behind us was open. The site was closed around 2003, late 2003 and was capped off. You got a layer of clay, which captures or stops the methane leaking out. Certainly underneath us you could think of yourself of standing on a mountain of waste.

CRAIG ALLEN: As kids we used to love a trip to the Mugga Lane tip. Today, the experience is a bit more sterile, household garbage is backed into concrete bunkers and residents are kept well away from the stink of rotting rubbish and the ubiquitous seagull, it looks and smells difference built's still Canberra's dumping ground.

CHRIS WARE: This facility opened in about 1970. The present cell you see behind us has four years of life left if we don't change our practices. The things that concerns all of us in the ACT No Waste is the rate that that is filling up.

CRAIG ALLEN: And that's happening despite government efforts to cut waste. So what progress has been made?

MAXINE COOPER, ACT COMMISSIONER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: I think the success has been enormous in terms of shifting a community that 10 years ago only had a 30 to 40 per cent rate of recycling to now nearly doubling that. So it's been a success in terms of communicating with the broader community about the need to actually recycle.

CRAIG ALLEN: It's true, Canberra is the recycling capital. Residents seem to get the message.

It's second nature to split our glass, paper and plastics from everyday day waste, even if we don't always get it right.

CHRIS WARE: This is an example of here of cardboard with PET bottles and a beer bottle down the bottom that will just have to go to landfill as well.

MAXINE COOPER: So separated is the key message. Leave it all loose. Separate it.

CRAIG ALLEN: Canberra's recycling plant relies on a mix of high technology and hands on dirty work. But even the most well meaning gesture at home can shut the place down.

CHRIS WARE: That will wrap itself around the conveyor belt. It will stop the whole plant for half an hour to an hour.

CRAIG ALLEN: Once the recyclables are sorted, they're sold back to manufacturers and the through put is staggering.

CHRIS WARE: Certainly there's enough here this is about two days supply of what comes in and has to go out again.

CRAIG ALLEN: The reality is rubbish is big business. Almost every link in the chain is privatised from the kerb side garbage run to the land fill site to the recycling depot and the companies that buy their crushed cans, glass and paper.

Against that profit imperative the Government has to convince the community that less is more.

CHRIS WARE: Canberra, the ACT, leads the nation in its resource recovery. Presently we divert 75 per cent of all waste away from landfill. And people can still do more to increase that level of resource recovery and stop filling up the landfill behind us here as quickly as it is being filled up.

CRAIG ALLEN: The problem is the sheer amount of stuff we buy and very quickly consume.

MAXINE COOPER: Although we've actually increased our recycling rate, overall our waste is going up. So the recycling prevents things going to landfill but even that is still increasing.

CRAIG ALLEN: So a far cry from no waste by 2010. Our level of garbage going to landfill has actually increased 10 per cent in the last five years.

CHRIS WARE: It has been trending up and obviously population increases will drive more waste to landfill. And as I've been saying increased consumption and increased packaging and people really need to think about what they're buying and what they are throwing out.

MAXINE COOPER: On average each Canberran per year spends $1475 in buying something they may use once or they don't even use at all. And it is particularly in food.

MARK SPROAT, BRASSEY HOTEL: Hi, josh, what's on tonight??

JOSH: Not much just a la carte and function.

CRAIG ALLEN: When it comes to recycling, households may have jumped on board but business is falling well short of the mark.

MARK SPROAT: Well, it's an expensive process. We probably spend in waste removal just in waste removal $20,000. And then on top of that there would be the cost there would be the cost of any recycling that we do, which would include cardboard products and bottles and paper.

CRAIG ALLEN: Unlike Canberra homes which get rubbish collection as part of their annual rates, businesses are on their own.

MARK SPROAT: Up until last year, late last year we used a recycling guy but he went out of business, he went bust. And then for a while we've just been making do because it's been quite so we've just been putting most of it in the hopper.

At the end of the day it's cheaper just to chuck it the bin.

CRAIG ALLEN: So where too from here? The Government is working on a new strategy to take the no waste principle beyond 2010.

You're the manager of No Waste, it's 2010, by rights you should have done yourself out of a job by now, shouldn't you?

CHRIS WARE: That would be nice to think that I could do myself out of a job. But obviously there will always be some level of waste and obviously we still need to do concentrate on what to do with the waste that is diverted from landfill.

CRAIG ALLEN: The Environment Commissioner says the no waste by 2010 strategy may not have reached its aspirational goal, but it shouldn't be consigned to Canberra's growing rubbish heap.

MAXINE COOPER: I think it has worked in parts. I think it's dragged us as a society into being the champions in recycling. But, having become champions in recycling, we haven't gone back and looked at the basic issue of do we really need to consume what we're consuming at the rate we're consuming.